This is why we know civilization is about to collapse. This man speaks the truth, and he is probably the only one up there speaking the truth, but he is considered to be the comic relief.
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Richie’s Dad is Dead
Tom Bosley, the actor who played Howard Cunningham on “Happy Days” has died at age 83. Interestingly, Barbara Billingsley had died just three days before. There is no meaning to this, but there is metaphor galore.
“I’ll discover my opinions as I say them”
A review of TAM (The Atheist’s Puzzle)
I see god’s fingerprints all over this fingerprint!!!!11!!
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia [citation needed]
I like Wikipedia, I really do. But there are also some serious, very serious problems with it. I just read the entries on the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, a few related historical entries, and the entry on the movie Zulu, which is about the Battle of Rorke’s drift.
My interest here is in looking at how things African are depicted in movies and other aspects of popular culture, especially historical events and “traditional” cultures. (I am not an expert on modern African studies.)
I will write about that at another time: Suffice it to say that at this point it is obvious that the overall pattern of divergences from historical (probable) fact in the movie can be best understood in reference to the by then well developed African in Western Eyes trope. One of the more blatant divergences is the invention of a person who simply was not present at the event (interestingly, there seems to be only one significant example of this in the movie) and it is “the young white woman” without which no Western movie about Africa would be complete.
Anyway, in reviewing these Wikipedia entries, I noticed that the Wikipedia process has it’s own pattern, including a preponderance of (amateur?) military historians at the keyboard who are unable to leave a single fact unturned no matter how insignificant, and a nearly complete lack of proportion so that very important facts get glossed. In addition, if you are Black or African, don’t expect your dead to be honored like the white dead will be. Shame.
And so, this all inspired me to make fun of Wikipedia with the following parody:
Continue reading Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia [citation needed]
Hacking a Google Calendar CLI Tool
I wrote earlier of the very useful command line utility called gcalcli (short for GoogleCALendarCommandLineInterface). Click here to read that post. One of the options is called “agenda” which spits out, by default, the next five days of calendar entries. If you would prefer a different range of time than five days, then you can specify two dates and the utility will give you that set of entries.
But I find that to be a bit of a pain, typing in the dates to start and end the list, when I generally want a quick and dirty “next several days.” That, I suppose, is why there is a default of five days. But five days is not a good default. If it is Wednesday, I want to see what I’ve got on my calendar for the rest of the current week, as well as what is on my calendar for ALL of next week. For me, a better default would be 14 days. With 14 days, you always get a full look at the present week and the next week, plus, sometimes, a bit after that.
One can imagine writing a bash script that figures out what day it is, and then adds enough days that you get an agenda for the remainder of the present week plus all of the next week, but no more days than that. Such a script could make use of bash’s ability to manage and manipulate dates as they occur in our periodic system, with 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, work days being a subset of five of those days, etc. etc.
One could also imagine writing a bash script to poke one’s eyes out with hot soldering irons.
A simpler solution is this:
Continue reading Hacking a Google Calendar CLI Tool
Iran Infuriated by Film of Woman’s Stoning
There is a stoning planned for the near future. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of shying away from criticizing this barbaric practice to avoid offending anyone’s sensibilities, there was instead a public outrage about it?
Continue reading Iran Infuriated by Film of Woman’s Stoning
An Inordinate Fondness # Nine
is a web carnival devoted to beetles, their biology and evolution. The current issue is at Beetles in the Bush. Go check it out!
Please help with a science survey
A colleague at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies at Loma Linda has asked me to pass this on to you:
IMPORTANT SURVEY ON ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION – Your help is needed! The Loma Linda University Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies is conducting a groundbreaking survey on attitudes toward the environment and conservation, particularly of those who love plants and animals. The results from this study, to be published in a professional journal, will contribute to our understanding of the role of plants and animals in society. Participants are urgently needed to complete the survey, which should take about 5-10 minutes of your time. Please click on this link.
Stimulating Hypocrisy: Scores of Recovery Act Opponents Sought Money Out of Public View
As expected, the liars, I mean Republicans (and Blue Dog Dems) who opposed the recovery act still wanted the recover act. They only wanted to look like they opposed it while they took advantage of it.
Rep. Pete Sessions, the firebrand conservative from Dallas, Texas, has relentlessly assailed the Democratic-passed stimulus law as a wasteful “trillion dollar spending spree” that was “more about stimulating the government and rewarding political allies than growing the economy and creating jobs.”
But that didn’t stop the Republican lawmaker from reaching his hand out behind the scenes to seek stimulus money for the suburb of Carrollton after the camera lights went dark and the GOP campaign against the 2009 stimulus law quieted down.
Ira Flatow Interview: Mark Your Calendars for Sunday, October 24th …
… for the truly ungodly time of 9:00 AM Central Time to listen to Air America’s “The Voice of Minnesota” Atheist Talk Radio Show on KTNF AM 950.
Ira Flatow (photo)
aDNA (that’s “art-DNA”) artist and sciJournalist Lynn Fellman and I will have a conversation with Ira Flatow of Talk of the Nation’s Science Friday about science communication, media, and the role of media.
The idea for having this conversation originated with the recent news of changes in the support available for Ira Flatow’s show. To get the latest information about this (and to learn how we all overreacted to the scary news that important funding was vaporizing!) have a look at Ira’s blog post on the topic.
You may not be able to listen live to this station station from where you are. I don’t even get it from where I am and I’m in the same metro area. But you can listen to it live on the KTNF web site, although I believe for reasons of FCC regulation ([snark] they do such a great job, don’t they? protecting our civic interests and stuff all the time, the FCC?[/snark]) you have to live near the station to listen to it on line. The special super dooper security system to check this is you enter “your” Minnesota zip code (like, for instance, 55433 or whatever) into the box and then the web page knows you live near but not too near the station.
In any event, Minnesota Atheists web site will have the podcast a few days after the show is over. Here. Check my blog every few minutes for more information on that.
Please use the social networking buttons below to spread the word about this show to all your friends and family. Thank you very much.
Typhoon Megi
We have been watching the Atlantic but ignoring the rest of the tropical storm world, mainly because that (the Pacific storms) is not an area of interest or experience for me. But you should know about this:
The strongest cyclone in years to buffet the Philippines knocked out communications and power as residents took shelter Monday, while flooding in Vietnam swept away a bus and 20 of its passengers, including a girl pulled from her mother’s grasp by the raging waters.
Goat Kills Hiker
A mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) killed a human (Homo sapiens) in Washington. The human hiker was gored in the leg on Klahhane Ridge in Olympic National Park. The goat, previously identified as an aggressive wild animal, was summarily executed by park rangers. Previously, rangers had tried to put the goat off humans by throwing bean bags and rocks at it.
There are about 300 299 mountain goats in Olympic National Park.
American Eugenics Organization Is Sterilizing British Drug Addicts
This is astonishing. An organization called “Project Prevention” led by a person by the name of Barbara Harris is offering money, which she openly admits to be bribes, to UK addicts who will submit to sterilization.
This comes after some 3,500 Americans were previously paid to not have children. The BBC report is here.
Continue reading American Eugenics Organization Is Sterilizing British Drug Addicts
The Evolution of Football and Shopping, and Delusions of Gender
The podcast of Desiree Schell’s interviews with me (recorded) and Cordelia Fine (author of Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
Check it out!